Weird Glitchy Area on my Footage

I edit on Final Cut (I just did the update to 10.4 a few days ago) and I noticed there's this weird glitchy area (it almost looks like the old VCR effect) at the top of some of the footage I took. I never experienced this before and I wonder if it has something to do with the new update? The footage looks fine when I play it back on my camera, in Premiere, and from just the file itself on my computer. Luckily I covered some of the messed up footage with b-roll but I have no clue what the problem is. Does it have something to do maybe with the SD card (Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB) I use possibly being messed up? I shoot on a Canon XA10 and edit on a 2015 Macbook Pro, any help would be great thank you.

I've seen this using gopro type footage in FCP 7 when I imported the footage directly and didn't first convert it to prores 422 in mpeg Streamclip. Looks like the same kind of "tearing" you experienced in this shot.

I guess I'd try a re-render first, then try to re-transcode the footage and import it back over the original shot.

Sorry didn't mean to seem abrupt. I have the same issues with the same camera and have spent the last four days trying all different ways to try and work around it but have had no success. So I was happy to know it's not just me or that my camera was on the way out.

Hello. I am experiencing the very same problem with a Canon HF G10 camera. After I saw that "drops" on the upper part of the footage the first time, I blamed the card. So I tried taking more test footage with three different cards, and they all showed the glitch on the upper area, and sometimes on the lower area as well. I tried to look at the footage direct from the camera, and it was playing just fine. I was about to send the cam in for a check, but it seems the problems is somewhere else.

I'm not sure if I have my card formatted correctly but what I did was put the SD Card into my computer, opened it up, opened the "PRIVATE" folder, clicked the AVCHD icon, selected the clip I needed and from the Quicktime player I hit file-save-saved to desktop, once it was on the desktop I just dragged it onto my timeline in Final Cut and the glitchy area went away.

It looks to me like it's something a bit different. If you import into FCPX using "Import Media", the glitch will show either if you import straight from the card or from the copy. If you just drag the .mts clip from the place you placed it onto the timeline, it will lag and slow down a lot, but look much better. I don't know exactly what happens inside FCPX, but maybe if you use "Import Media" it will transcode the media, introducing the artifacts (in facts, it will show as a .mov file), while if you drag it it won't transcode. Just a guess.

[Fabrizio D'Agnano]"It looks to me like it's something a bit different. If you import into FCPX using "Import Media", the glitch will show either if you import straight from the card or from the copy. If you just drag the .mts clip from the place you placed it onto the timeline, it will lag and slow down a lot, but look much better. I don't know exactly what happens inside FCPX, but maybe if you use "Import Media" it will transcode the media, introducing the artifacts (in facts, it will show as a .mov file), while if you drag it it won't transcode. Just a guess.

Fabrizio D'Agnano
Rome, Italy
"

Thanks for this suggestion Fabrizio - this is the thing that finally worked for me on my 27-inch, Late 2012 iMac!

To expand on Fabrizio's method: Drag the .mts files that make up your raw video from the STREAM folder (YourSDcard>PRIVATE>AVCHD>BDMV>STREAM) directly into the Browser. To open the AVCHD & BDMV folder you have to Control-Click and choose "Show Package Contents."

It takes a while to import and I get the Message "Validating File" for a long time, but it does finally load and then process. After trying this with several .mts files I didn't have any glitches in my video like before when I imported from the "Import" options within the app. So far so good at least.

I'm sure this is a bug from the new version of FCX - I never had it happen with hundreds of imports from SD cards until after this update. It's a frustrating glitch and hopefully they will fix it soon. It seems that all of the problems are coming from Canon users like me. I have a 2010 Mac Pro running High Sierra and FCX.4 and the problem doesn't occur there.

I definitely sounds like FCPX is adding the glitches during its conversion process.

FCPX doesn't natively support AVCHD files, so by importing them directly from the AVCHD card structure it's doing a conversion to ProRes in the background. There's no way to avoid this if you keep the AVCHD package structure in place. That's why, when you pull the .mts files from the card structure and directly import those, you don't see the glitches. It's the raw file.

Do you have EditReady? If you do, rewrap your footage to .mov, so you can directly import it into FCPX without a transcode, and without having to dive into your package contents. See if the issue is still there. If you don't have it, there's a trial you can download so you can run some tests. You could also use EditReady to transcode your footage to ProRes to see if it's just the conversion to ProRes in general that's causing the issue, or FCPX's conversion in the program.

[Michael Hancock]"You could also use EditReady to transcode your footage to ProRes to see if it's just the conversion to ProRes in general that's causing the issue, or FCPX's conversion in the program.
"
Thank you Michael. I'll try EditReady this morning.
However, I do not think is a problem with ProRes in general, but just FCPX latest version conversion. It's now several years I'm using those Canon camcorders, and I never had a problem importing the clips from FCPX and having them automatically transcoded until the latest upgrade.

I found I had a forgotten licensed copy of ClipWrap and tried to transcode the .mts files to Pro Res. I did it and relinked the files from the browser (I had already used the .mts files in an edit and did not like the idea to start it all over). It seems everything is playing fine, with no glitches or pixelation and not laggy and slow as with the .mts. I didn't have time to check it thoroughly, frame by frame, but I'm almost positive it's ok, and the problem is in FCPX 10.4. It's still a pain, and I hope they fix it very soon, but at least I don't have to toss the old Canon's in the can like I was about to do, and I have usable footage from the B rolls of the latest two sessions that I was afraid I'd lost... Wounded is still better than dead ☺

I too have experienced the import glitches when importing into FCPX from a Canon Vixia HF G10 camcorder. The ClipWrap workaround is effective as it can open multiple .mts files as "Spanned" and convert into a single .mov file suitable for Final Cut Pro X and does not exhibit the glitches.

Unfortunately, this import anomoly continues with Final Cut Pro versions 10.4.1 and as of yesterday, 10.4.2. I sincerely hope Apple addresses this bug in the next version release.

I've updated to MacOS 10.13.5 and then imported 4 clips from my Canon Vixia HF G10 camcorder into FCPX 10.4.2. So far, so good. No digital anomalies. This is part of an e-mail I've received today as a reply from my feedback report of this thread's issue through the FCPX app:

Hi Jon,

This is Chris from Apple Pro Apps in Cupertino. Thank you for your recent feedback about using Canon AVCHD clips in Final Cut Pro.

We believe this issue has been resolved in the latest macOS update, which was released earlier today. At your earliest convenience, please update to macOS 10.13.5, see if your issue has been resolved, and report back with your results.